What is it about?
This paper examines how books offering gender-specific advice shaped society's view of women’s bodies in interwar Romania, alongside popular music and movies. It shows how ideas of beauty changed as part of a bigger look at Romanian women’s fashion, opportunities, and beliefs. The push and pull between personal choice and pressure from external influences is shown through Marthe Bibesco’s “Noblesse de Robe” and Aurel Voina’s “Îngrijirea tenului” [Skincare], mixed with music and film to create a sensory experience. Having a voice means the power to choose and stand up for yourself through education. Silence means there's no choice, often pushed by propaganda to make conformity seem natural. The playlist features versions of Por una cabeza, the Romanian translation of Zaraza, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, and Casablanca’s As Time Goes By.
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Why is it important?
This mix of different fields connects gender issues with class, ethnicity, and place, helping to better understand gender, communication, and culture in Romania.
Perspectives
For this paper, I examined how books, music, and films about beauty shaped ideas about women’s bodies in interwar Romania. I found that these cultural works reflected the struggle between what women wanted for themselves and what society expected. By examining works by Marthe Bibesco and Aurel Voina, along with a playlist I put together, I showed how gender, class, ethnicity, and place all played a role in shaping women’s voices and identities.
Dr. Sonia Doris Andras
Gheorghe Sincai Institute for Social Studies and the Humanities
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Negotiating Women’s Bodies: An Artistic Exploration of Coercion and Agency in Interwar Romanian Gendered Advice Literature, Journal of Romanian Studies, April 2026, Liverpool University Press,
DOI: 10.3828/jrns.2026.2.
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